By Charlie Pogacar
A lot of pizzeria operators talk about scaling or franchising. A select few might even envision growing a pizza chain so big, it eventually becomes a publicly traded company. Count Khanh Nguyen, founder and CEO of Zalat Pizza, among all groups. But he remains the only operator—at least that we know of—who wants to build a pizza brand to last 1,000 years.
On the most recent episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast, Nguyen shared a motto, of sorts, that is shaping Zalat Pizza, the 30-location brand based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area: “Made with pride. Shared with joy. Built for a millennium.” Nguyen said the philosophy came together when he was asked to take a look at the company mission and whether or not he wanted to tweak it with the future in mind.
“And as I looked at things…I’m like, yes, we want to do these great things, like, make shareholders returns,” Nguyen said on the podcast. “But does that really excite me in terms of going to work everyday? As I thought about it, I’m like, is there something we can have as a mission that’s actually more exciting than that?”
Khanh Nguyen and Zalat: Is This a Top 10 Pizza Brand in the Making?
Nguyen kept coming back to a single word—longevity—and began to research what the oldest hospitality brands in the world were. He figured he might find a restaurant or two that was a few hundred years old. Instead, he discovered several institutions that were over 1,000 years old—taverns in the U.K. that opened in the [literal!] Dark Ages, hotels in Japan that have been serving guests since the 700s. While this revelation may have stunned Nguyen, it also pointed him in the right direction.
“You think about 1,000 years… all the political changes, wars, plagues—and people kept going to that restaurant, right?” Nguyen said. “They showed up and somebody served them food, gave them good service, and kept coming back… so why not make that the aspiration? We’re in this for the long run.”
That realization reframed everything about Zalat’s growth strategy. Instead of maximizing EBITDA for an eventual exit, Nguyen is challenging his leadership team to think in terms of making history. What decisions today increase the chance that Zalat is still serving pizza in 2075? 2175? Or 3025? The audacity of a thousand-year plan isn’t in expecting to hit it—it’s in the discipline it demands now.
Nguyen’s back story suggests nothing is impossible. In 1975, Nguyen was just eight years old when his family—his parents and eight siblings—fled Vietnam as the country collapsed. Their original flight out of Dalat was blocked after authorities mistakenly left three of the children—including Khanh—off the passenger list, forcing the family to join the chaotic overland exodus toward Saigon and eventually escape by boat.
What felt almost normal to a child was, for the adults around him, a harrowing sprint for survival. That journey carried the Nguyens from a governor’s mansion with a staff of chefs to a refugee camp in Arkansas, and eventually to Houston.
If that were a foundational story of your childhood, building a pizza brand that stands the test of time might feel a bit easier.
To hear more about Nguyen’s story, check out the latest episode of the podcast at one of the following links:
